I dunno, it looks like the system requirements implies a not more than 1 year old gaming computer costing at least $1000 (e.g. this one [1]). They're hardly targeting casual gamers, they're targeting people who are accustomed to dropping $600 on gaming hardware to have the "latest and greatest". See the GTX 980 Ti, any 27" 4K monitor, etc. none of which have exactly flopped. Even slightly ridiculously priced products like the GTX Titan X seem to sell OK, or NVidia wouldn't keep releasing $1000 gaming GPUs year after year.

[1] http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/build-an-amazing-gef...

There's a world of difference between a general-purpose computer and a specialized device like the Rift. The computer has its own independent utility and stands on its own merit, the Rift is an entirely optional upgrade that nobody has to purchase. To make a car analogy, most people are going to buy a car to get to work. But you should still evaluate all the optional extras on their own merits, unless you're just too rich to care. The proper way to evaluate a lift kit is not "well it's twice what it was advertised as, but that's still only 25% over the base cost of the vehicle".

Regarding the other things - the fact that nice components exist is entirely irrelevant to the failures of expectation management here. If NVIDIA spent 2 years marketing the Titan X as the best GPU to have at the $1k price point, and then on launch day it's suddenly $2k - their customers would very justifiably be pissed and it would certainly affect sales.

It's neither here nor there, but you can also cut build costs quite a bit further than they did in that article. You can bring it down to about $800 for the same set of core components. Buy the CPU at MicroCenter, use the stock CPU fan instead of a cooler, buy a refurb 970 from EVGA, look for a 750W Gold PSU around the $50 mark, buy a cheaper mobo, buy cheaper memory. You can even go cheaper if you make some minor compromises - use a 2500k and overclock, get a refurb 780 Ti from EVGA B-stock (same performance as a 970), and you can also drop the HDD until you really need more space. That lets you squeeze at least another $200 out of it pretty easily without affecting performance, which would get you down to around $600.

The AMD 290 is 2.5 years old. The NVidia 680 & 780 are also acceptable cards, and they're over 2.5 years old (although considerably more expensive than the 970). So you need a top-of-the-line gaming computer from 2.5 years ago, or a high-end gaming computer from 1 year ago.

> Those free units would translate into a sizeable discount for their paying retail customers

I doubt it. Initial runs are always more expensive because you're paying for the initial tooling and investment, not necessarily because of the actual raw price of the unit. Depending on minimum size commitments and the like with the manufacturers, the 7k "free" units may even be netting a discount on the remaining unit costs.

> sizeable discount for their paying retail customers

I think you are wrong on that. I honestly doubt the 6500 free units they are giving out would actually affect the price at all. Think about this, what would have been worse, your 6500 most loyal and vocal customers being pissed because the price of an oculus rift was doubled overnight or goodwill from dropping the price of a rift 10 dollars?

We need to consider how many Rifts are actually going to be sold at this price point. It's surely many, but it's not going to be millions of devices (this is a very expensive niche product being marketed to a relatively small slice of the market with even fewer supporting games to use it with).

With that in mind, 7k free units may very well indeed be sizable.

Regardless, they already pissed off most of their original backers during the sudden-no-forementioned sale to Facebook (which to this day remains a bizarre marriage). Sure, it may make some folks feel better, but it's unlikely to tip the scales in any sizable manner (or effect the eventual outcome of bringing this product to market).